Google Demographic Bidding.

You can now target Plentyoffish Users via Age and Gender on Google Adwords. To do so go here.. https://services.google.com/demographicbidding/

View the Google announcement

More details here

NJ To Pass Law On Social Networks & Dating sites.

This has to be the dumbest idea i’ve ever seen. NJ is trying to force social Networks and dating sites to conduct background checks on anyone signing up to their sites. The key wording here is “social referral services”. This will probably be one of the biggest stories in 2008 if it goes through, as it will open the door to all kinds of regulation on the internet in the US.

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d. “Internet dating service” means a person or entity directly or indirectly in the business, for profit, of offering, promoting or providing access to dating, relationship, compatibility, matrimonial or social referral services principally on or through the Internet.

f. “Member” means a customer, client or participant who submits to an Internet dating service information required to access the service for the purpose of engaging in dating, relationship, compatibility, matrimonial or social referral.

OPW — Jan 14 — Emily Hackett from the Internet Alliance sent me the following note…

The NJ Governor is going to sign this bill unless he gets email from affected constituents, e.g. on line daters and dating and social networking industry doing business in New Jersey, asking for a veto SB 1977. You are our last and best hope for a veto. It is the 11th Hour in NJ. Governor John Corizon can at any moment sign, and has until Jan. 15th at noon to sign, the first online dating bill in the 50 states. The very powerful Senate Leader Cody included SB 1977 in a trio of bills trumpeted as increasing online safety. We at the Internet Alliance believe offering criminal background checks for online daters provides a false sense of security. We also think online dating is an activity and an industry that does not need to be regulated. Finally, we think the bill as written is unconstitutional. We are afraid when this bill passes in New Jersey it will open the floodgates for regulation of dating and social network sites. Click here for email address and more info.

NYT Article.

Nice Article in the NYT today.

600,000  members log into the site  per day,    not total active members.

Plentyoffish is growing like a weed all over the place,  the UK is leading that growth.    I hope that I can replicate what I did in Canada and end up with 50%+ marketshare by year end.  

Stay tuned for several major announcements coming up in the next few weeks.

The future of the internet.

Throughout history technology and change has always been driven by one thing,   the need to become all knowing.   People want to know what others are thinking,   People want to know how others behave,   people want to be other people.   Many of the most used inventions of the past 100 years tap into this,   The Telephone,  TV,  Movies,  Computers,  Cell Phones,  The Internet.   Each of these inventions allows us to know more about other people,  and to communicate faster with other people.In the last 2 years we have seen social networks take off and Youtube spring to life,   these are again just stepping stones to us wanting to become all knowing.    Sites like facebook allow us unprecedented access into the lives of others, by viewing others social circle, by seeing what parties they went to along with endless photo’s etc.  Sites like youtube show us how others behave and think,  and in many cases convey emotion. My prediction for the next 100 years…

1.     There will be a device that can record your thoughts emotions and your vision in real time and you will be able to store it on something like youtube.com  were others can experience it.

2.     The internet today is composed of computers,   the brain is basically a computer  it would make sense that at some point down the line technology will come about that allows your brain to connect to the net/others.   I could see it working much like webcams do today,  you just find someone you like and hear/feel/see what they do as they go about life.   In the scientific world I could see computers creating a virtual world for you that looks like a dream,   other people can then enter the dream and change things at will.    Think of hundreds of people working together to design something,  but instead of using tools like autocad its done with your mind connected to others as well as computers.

I wonder if i’ll live to see any of that…        In the next 5 years I think the next major thing on the internet  will be a site that helps convey emotions  in some way.   Social networks only seem to tap into vanity,  ie  who has the most friends,  who looks the best,  how many persons  top friend are you  etc.    But there are many other emotions that can be tapped into.

How to Advertise On Adsense/Plentyoffish

There are several major dating sites that have been spending close to $100k/month on the site and with the recent change in adsense,  adsense was basically converted to a Banner ad network.

The CTR on  text ads  declined about 60%  in the last 2 months with googles changes,    Image ads on the other hand stayed the same.  If you take a screen shot of a text ad and then run it as an image ad it will get  2 times the click thru rate.

If you want an ad that will get a lot of traffic create something like this.

If you want even more traffic,   Create 5 different ads  or variations on these ads.    Then set the campaign to display them all equally.   This way 1 person isn’t going to see the same ad 20 times.       If you are a company like american singles you could create a campaign with 6 banner ads for 6 different sites.    This will create a sort of artificial Frequency capping ability,  something that google REALLY lacks.

I also suggest making use of the 37 channels set up on Plentyoffish,  many of them are women only,    men only,   grouped by age etc.    But most importantly if you are using CPM based text ads on the site  they are going to do very poorly  because of the dramatically reduced click thru rate.

Spark Networks for sale $100+ million..

Spark networks is for sale.
I swear every single second tier dating site is for sale these days. Look for some major deals in the coming months.